CV
Ruohan Zhang
📧 rz21@illinois.edu
🌐 Personal Website | LinkedIn 📄 Download CV (PDF)
Education
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, USA
Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering — GPA: 3.64 / 4.00
Sept. 2023 – Present
University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Hefei, China
B.Sc. in Electronic Engineering and Information Science — GPA: 4.05 / 4.30, Rank: 1 / 96
Sept. 2019 – Jun. 2023
Research Interests
Robot Perception · Tactile Sensing and Perception · Design and Fabrication of Tactile Sensors
Research Experience
Active Touch Exploration for Manipulation with Reinforcement Learning
Advisor: Prof. Wenzhen Yuan, RoboTouch Lab, UIUC
Aug. 2025 – Present
- Developing reinforcement learning policies for tactile exploration using IsaacLab.
- Integrating visuo-tactile feedback for physical property inference.
- Implementing a co-optimization framework that jointly refines perception, exploratory actions, and manipulation models for fine-grained control.
Towards Scalable and Damageless Harvesting: A Sensorized Gripper with In-Hand Tactile Perception
Advisor: Prof. Wenzhen Yuan, RoboTouch Lab, UIUC
Oct. 2024 – Aug. 2025
- Designed and fabricated compact optical-mechanical components for seamless integration of sensing and actuation in a robotic gripper.
- Developed a ROS-based real-time control pipeline** for tactile algorithms including force prediction, slip detection, and fruit softness estimation.
- Integrated perception modules into a unified system, achieving 100% grasp success with ±0.1 N force variation in agricultural trials.
- Work under review at IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL).
Vision-based Proprioception and Tactile Sensing for Soft Robotics
Advisor: Prof. Wenzhen Yuan, RoboTouch Lab, UIUC
Sept. 2023 – Sept. 2024
- Developed a novel embedded-camera tactile pipeline for sub-millimeter 3D reconstruction via photometric stereo and deep learning.
- Implemented real-time proprioception algorithms for soft grippers with precise shape reconstruction.
- Published in The International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR, 2025) and presented as a*keynote talk at ICRA 2025.
Design and Innovation of Quadrotor UAV
Advisor: Prof. Wei Lu, USTC
Mar. – Jul. 2021
- Built a quadrotor UAV from scratch, achieving stable hovering within ±3 cm drift.
- Designed logic control circuits, power systems, and optimized flight control algorithms.
- Enhanced flight response and speed through real-time parameter tuning.
Industry Experience
Research Assistant, Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA)
Advisor: Prof. Chong Luo, Intelligent Multimedia Lab
Sept. 2022 – Jul. 2023
- Conducted research on generative AI for video processing and diffusion-based object tracking.
- Developed a diffusion-model tracking pipeline achieving state-of-the-art performance under occlusion.
- Improved computational efficiency and memory performance for large-scale datasets.
Professional & Academic Activities
- Reviewer, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL)
- Teaching Assistant, UIUC: ECE205 (Spring 2025), ECE206 (Fall 2025) — Led lab sessions, graded assignments, and guided students in embedded systems.
Honors and Awards
- Guo Moruo Scholarship (2023) — Highest Honor for Undergraduates (Top 1%)
- China National Scholarship (2021, 2022)
- USTC Talented Students Program Scholarship (2020–2022)
Technical Skills
- Programming: Python, C++, C, MATLAB, LaTeX, Embedded Systems
- Robotics & Simulation: ROS, Isaac Lab, PyTorch
- Modeling & Design: Blender, Abaqus, COMSOL, SOFA, SolidWorks, Onshape, Fusion 360, Altium Designer
- Languages: Chinese (Native), English (Professional Proficiency)